10: Dec. 29 vs. Dec. 27: It's Saturday vs. Thursday, a more
preferable day for viewing parties, and one that gives the traveling
fans a few days to soak up the atmosphere.

9. Best of the rest. Not only are the Beavers the highest-ranked,
three-loss team in the BCS Standings, but they are also - with this bowl
invitation - the clear-cut No. 3 team in the Pac-12 behind BCS bowlers
Stanford and Oregon.

8. Texas vs. Baylor/West Virginia/Texas
Tech, etc. From a national perspective, a win over a program big enough
to have its own TV network counts for more than just a good team
from Texas (or West Virginia).

7: Happy to be here: Even though it's virtually a home game for Texas, the Longhorns and their fans may feel the Alamo is beneath them and their storied program. The Beavers don't have that issue.

6: Pflugerville, come on down: Running back Storm Woods
expects more than 100 friends and family to make the 45-minute drive
from Pflugerville. Not only is that a cool story, but it gives coach
Mike Riley & Co. the chance to say to Texas recruits: You play for
us, and your family can watch you play.

5: Recruiting: Again,
there isn't a much better way to attract the attention of the very many
excellent high school players in Texas than by beating Texas. It
certainly beats flying a plane over the Friday night lights.

4:
Timing: This comes at a time when the Beavers' greatest Texas
ambassadors, the Rodgers brothers, are a year removed from Corvallis and
as Jacquizz emerges as a possible star in the NFL.

2. Respect: The
Alamo Bowl, with Texas in hand, easily could have selected the Los
Angeles TV market on the Pac-12 side, knowing it could sell plenty of
tickets locally. But it didn't. It chose the team in Corvallis, and it's
not often in college football that football trumps TV money.

Unless
you're somewhere around the nearby towns of DeKalb, Ill., or Madison,
Wisc., (or in Corvallis), you probably think the bowl matchups this year
are a little weak. Here's how the bowls would look in a perfect world. (Except that Holiday Bowl idea.)

Moving from the perfect world to Hollywood, it's the "Magic Mike'' Bowl, starring Mike Riley with a possible cameo by Matthew McConaughey.